Odyssey
A rosy-fingered dawn. Hummingbird, says Agapanthus, this is love. July 27, 2021 . [ 1177 ]
Tag Archive for ‘Poetry’
Canvas 738 — Toward the Second Time
and then you feel like a poet come back again,only to be loved this time around — scribbling furiously,toward the second time you are gratefully undone. “Toward the Second Time”Recently Banned Literature, August 17, 2016 Canvas 738 August 17, 2016 . [ 1176 ]
Pandemia
The United States of Us and Them. The Republic of Either Or. The Union of Right or Wrong. This Side or That. I have lived in each. They called themselves free. But their borders were trash. Their borders were long. So I moved to the land. I moved to the sky. I moved to the sea. I moved to The Burial Ground. . [ 1174 ]
The Annotated Proverbs of Hell
Once upon a time, a very long short time ago, I “annotated” William Blake’s Proverbs of Hell. Written in 2007 during the months of November and December, my sixty-nine mostly odd, somewhat awkward, likely absurd poetic responses to the Proverbs comprise the entire sixteenth volume of Songs and Letters. The Proverbs are from the 1994 Dover edition of Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Here is the sixth: The […]
How You Bury a Butterfly
Imagine a future museum that preserves the furniture of today — the overstuffed chairs, the massive sofas, the acre-wide, bottomless, bloated beds — and its lean and agile visitors looking on wide-eyed, shaking their heads. Why did they torture themselves? How did they live that way? High in the mountain wilderness, John Muir would use the scented branches of conifers to make a bed for the night. The crystal waters […]
God
All the little things — I love how they break and throw off sparks. I was a sower once; in my pouch, there were ten thousand suns. In those days, I was man and woman both. I am still. Hold me to the light. Turn me gently in your palm. Recently Banned Literature, November 8, 2011 . [ 1168 ]
Daybreak and One Small Flower
Daybreak and one small flower — my window sill wakens like a field. Songs and Letters, February 25, 2008 . [ 1167 ]
Ocean, Boat, Sail
Fresh air and a bright blue sky, with just a few thin white clouds arranging and rearranging themselves, all as if there were no fires in the West, or, for that matter, no trouble, land or sea, anywhere in the world. Out of this there comes the loud scolding voice of a crow in close pursuit of a smaller hawk, the birds matching speeds high above the treetops and rapidly […]
Remember
Everything I eat, everything I wear, everything I use; everything that sustains me and makes my life easier and more comfortable; everything that educates me, everything that stimulates me intellectually and inspires me in the realm of art — these are all proof of how directly my life is related to others, and of how completely I depend on people almost all of whom I will never meet and know. […]
An Hour from Now
The days are about survival. A man out early, wishing not to be seen, peddles off with my zucchini in hand. It’s all for a good cause: to quiet his hunger. Shall I rush after him? Shall I pretend I can feed him with the hollow fruit of my imagination? Shall I explain to him that he has himself been imagined in these very lines? Or has he imagined me? […]
William Michaelian 
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